Tuesday

MIAMI -- European Union and U.S. officials in bilateral trade talks here this week scrambled to patch up a spat over their revised goods market access offers, after the EU surprised the U.S. by pushing for longer tariff phaseouts on well over one hundred categories of industrial goods compared with what the EU had previously offered. The EU in an offer communicated to the U.S. last week extended to either three or seven years its proposed tariff phaseouts on certain...

China's announcement last month that it will reform the governance of its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was met with guarded optimism by the Obama administration, but business experts see little substantive change that will benefit investors seeking to do business in the country. China's State Council announced on Sept. 16 that, by 2020, it plans to implement a new SOE regime that will allow foreign companies to own minority stakes in government-owned companies; classify SOEs into two separate baskets to determine...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) chapter on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures is subject to dispute settlement and also contains a "rapid-response mechanism" aimed at dealing with situations where shipments of food or agricultural products are held at the border due to an SPS problem, according to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. Speaking during an Oct. 15 conference call organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, Froman highlighted the rapid-response mechanism as a novel enforcement tool included in the TPP agreement...

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton mid-week said she is "not in favor" of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal based on what she understands so far, citing its failure to address currency manipulation and its protections for pharmaceutical companies, but stopped well short of declaring her firm opposition to the deal. "What I know about it, as of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it," Clinton told PBS Newshour in an Oct. 7 interview, referring...

The lead House Republican supporter of the Export-Import Bank announced on Sept. 30 that he is seeking to file a discharge petition that would bring his Ex-Im reauthorization bill to the floor for a vote, five days after he told Inside U.S. Trade he would wait until House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) resigned before pursuing such a move. A spokeswoman with Rep. Stephen Fincher's office (R-TN) said Ex-Im supporters had limited options to move their new legislation to renew the...

Least-developed countries (LDCs) in Asia and Africa clashed this week in the World Trade Organization over whether the United States should extend duty-free quota-free (DFQF) access for apparel items to all LDCs as increased fulfillment of a 2013 WTO ministerial pledge that members strive to expand such access to 97 percent of all tariff lines. At a Sept. 23 meeting of the Committee on Trade and Development, the United States also signaled that it was cool to increasing LDC benefits...

President Obama on Wednesday (Sept. 16) said Chinese cybertheft of business confidential information and trade secrets is "one of the biggest issues" he will raise with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his state visit next week, and warned that he considers these practices an "act of aggression" that must be stopped by U.S. sanctions if necessary. "[We] are preparing a number of measures that will indicate to the Chinese that this is not just a matter of us being mildly...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is denying a press report suggesting it gave the green light to a Cargill plant located in China to export Chinese-slaughtered poultry to the United States, but its assurances to the contrary have failed to satisfy a U.S. food safety advocacy group. Washington-based Food & Water Watch pressed USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in an Aug. 27 letter for further clarification about whether the department had worked out an arrangement with either Cargill or Chinese...

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has been evaluating whether U.S. complaints about Peruvian legislation that critics charge has rolled back environmental protections in order to attract foreign investment and boost trade lend themselves to dispute settlement under a bilateral free trade agreement, according to a USTR letter obtained by Inside U.S. Trade . "We are working to assess the facts, the applicable legal standards, and evidentiary burdens to determine whether dispute settlement is an appropriate tool for this...

Despite its claims to be negotiating a trade agreement that will go beyond the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), the European Commission's e-commerce proposal in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) falls substantially short of what World Trade Organization members are discussing in that plurilateral deal -- leaving out provisions on free data flows and even EU-backed provisions on online consumer protection. That draft e-commerce chapter is included within the EU's overall services text proposal that it tabled during...